Spain, Portugal... England!!!

Spain was beautiful. I'm not sure I've ever been to a more beautiful place. All of the food was so delicious. The people were friendly. The weather was great. I definitely have to go back to Barcelona. But maybe I should see the rest of Spain first. :-) The day I left, I wasn't really hungry. I didn't really eat anything, and I felt like it was a shame because the food was so amazing. I got done going to the Gaudi things and then I decided to head back to Las Ramblas and check out the market which I tried to go to the day before, but it was closed. It was amazing! (See album "Barthalona".) Everything was so fresh and beautiful. It all looked so delicious! I wandered deeper and deeper into the market and came upon a couple of "bars" that served food. I looked at a couple of them and decided upon one where this woman and her daughter were sharing a plate of seafood. I ordered a beer and pointed to what they were eating. The guy just laughed at me. There weren't many foreigners there--which was what appealed to me. The food came and it was an amazing grilled seafood feast: an entire fish, a razor clam, a giant prawn, a squid, mussels, clams, scallops, and lots of little octopus thingies (decidedly not squid, as they only had 8 legs). And it was all covered in some sort of delicious, Spanish, herbed oil. Plus fresh-baked bread. Mmmm. Best meal ever. EV-ER.

Then I left for Lisbon. The first night there I had this delicious dinner at a fancy restaurant. It was like some sort of tomato-y gumbo-y rice thing with shrimp and lobster. Good, but expensive. The next day I just ate at pastry shops the whole day because the only affordable food I could find other than that were fried, battered meat on stale rolls. Not appetizing. However, I did go to a killer castle on the tallest hill in Lisbon. And Europe's larest Oceanarium. Sweet. Unfortunately, I can't post the pictures because this computer has had it's USB capabilities disabled by the hostel. Nazis.

Yeah, speaking of London... YAY FOR BEING IN AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRY!!! It's amazing. Also, everyone has cute British accents. Today on the metro ...tube (that just sounds funny)... I heard this like 3-year-old girl speaking with this posh British accent and it took all my effort not to laugh every time she talked. She was like the girl in Family Guy that Stewie is in love with. Hilarious stuff. Anyway, last night when I got here I came to my hostel and they gave me my room, I walk in it, and everyone in the room looks at me. I look around and realize all the beds are already taken, and that's why they were all so surprised to see me. So, I go back, tell the guy, he appologizes, gives me another room, I joke and say, "There's not going to be someone sleeping in this one, right? Haha.", he says no, and I go off to the room. Yeah, someone sleeping in that bed, too. I go back and they finally just put me in an empty room. So far I have slept in 3 different rooms for 4 different nights and never had to sleep in the same room as someone else. Yessss. Maybe I'll have some company tonight. Who knows. Today I saw Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, and tried to go the British Museum, but I didn't realize today wasn't Thursday, so it had already closed. Oops. I also ate some amazing Indian and Japanese food. Indian food has an amazing quality that it is exactly the same no matter where you eat it. The Japanese food in Russia is different than the Japanese food in America, which is different than the Japanese food in England. England's is probably the most authentic. And delicious. The only thing that bothers me about London is that everything is really expensive. If you think about $1 being 1 pound, everything is almost exactly the same price it would be in America. However, if you take the exchange rate into effect, you want to cry a little. No, a lot. An American girl that told me how to get to my hostel by bus, also gave me the money for the bus because I didn't have any pounds. She was like, "Here's the 2 pounds you need." I say back, "I can't take that; it's like 4 dollars." She says, "No, it's like 2 dollars--you have to stop thinking like that!" She's right. If you think about 1 pound being 1 dollar, everything is completely reasonable (for a big city). I'm just going to be crushed when I look at my bank account afterward.

**My internet time ran out at this point. I wrote this on the 19th, but I'm just posting this now that I'm back on the internet.

Photos!

I finally got around to uploading my pictures from my last vacation, as well as everything since! Check out the links on the right-hand side under "Newest Photos". :-)

Now, I'm off to the airport! Lisbon, here I come!

And the journey begins!

Yay!!! I made it to Barcelona in one piece!

Despite the fact that our plane took off an hour and a half late, we still landed on time. I'm not sure they had the arrival time calculated correctly... :-) Or maybe they're just so used to flying from Russia, that they know all the planes will take off an hour and a half late. :-D That was the most inefficient and poorly laid-out airport I have ever been in. It looks all new and shiny and modern, but it's procedures are soooo Soviet. Awesome. :-)

I am also disappointed that I entered the Schengen zone through Italy and not Spain. That means no more stamps in my passport until I leave Portugal. (def. Schengen countries: European countries that have abolished border checks between countries that have signed the agreement. 15 full-fledged members, plus some that are in the middle of the process.)

So, it's like just after midnight here. I'm going to go walk Las Ramblas for a little and then go to sleep. In the dorm room that I paid for 1 bed in, but no one else is staying in. Amazing. It's really strange, too, because it's RIGHT on Las Ramblas, RIGHT by the metro! :-) Maybe tomorrow I'll have some company.

Anyway, I'm gonna go try and find a spiffy Spanish sim-card for my phone. :-) Night! (Or whatever time of day it is where you are...)

Silly old Russia

In my few months here in Moscow, I have come across many strange Russian phrases. However, there are two special ones that when I hear, I can't help but chuckle to myself.

1.) Вот это вот (vote eh-tuh vote, trans. "there it is"). I'm sure all of my fellow Russian-as-a-foreign-language-learners are just as confused by this phrase as I am. My problem? Well, let's break the phrase down (or at least I'll try and use my shaky understanding of idiomatic Russian phrases to display why I'm confused. Well, really just amused, because I know what it means). First, вот: on it's own, "вот" already means "there it is". For example, I misplace the lid to the water bottle in the kitchen and ask my host mom if she knows where it is. When she finds it, she would most likely say, "Вот!", "There it is!" Next, вот это: most of the time "вот это" means "this one", but even in English you can sometimes use "this one" and "there is is" interchangeable. For example, I'm standing in the mall with my friend and she asks me which store I bought my boots in. I point to it and say, "Вот это!", or "This one!" However, if at first I don't see it and I look around for a minute before I find it, when I point and say, "Вот это!", you could translate it as either, "This one!" or "There it is!" And, lastly, as I've already pointed out, "вот это вот" also means "there it is". For example, I'm in class doing a grammar exercise and I make a stupid mistake. The teacher looks over the exercise, asks me to correct it, and then looks over it again. If I've done it right the second time, she'll say, "Вот это вот!", or "There it is!" (the correct answer). But she could also just say, "Вот!", still meaning "There it is!" So, now you're starting to understand my issue. I was explaining to my friend Robert last night how amused I am by this phrase, and said he had never heard it before and didn't know what it meant. Before I had the chance to explain, his Russian girlfriend defined it simply as "Вот!" and laughs at it with me. It just adds to the ridiculousness of it all, when a Russian can even point out the exact thing I find so amusing. I think that when I can finally use "вот это вот" naturally, I will have mastered the Russian language. It just sounds so stupid when I say it.

2.) Очень не плохой (oh-chen knee plah-hoi, trans good). This one is just all-around amusing. First, "плохой" means "bad", the adjective. "Не плохой" means "not bad", just like in English. And "очень" means "very". Knowing all these things you might assume when they're put together they'll be something like "not very bad", which, to me, means something is actually worse than "not bad". For example, in response to te question "How's your soup?", "Not bad." means pretty good, while "Not very bad." means just a little bad, but not VERY. This is not the case in Russian. So, then we try to translate word-for-word, hoping for a better approximation: "very not bad". You have to admit that it's kind of amusing to think that Russians walk around saying things are "very not bad". Go ahead, laugh a little. But, it doesn't sound funny in Russian. (I know, I'm disappointed too.) It turns out it's just this really weird way of saying "good". It's like Russians can't bring themselves to call something good, which, let's face it, seems to go against the whole Russian mentality. So I guess it kind of makes sense that they would have to come up with something that means good, but still uses the word bad. :-) Gotta love 'em!

Along the same lines, here's a story my grammar teacher told us on Wednesday to display how Russians aren't even phased by something that is actually bad. ("Everything is bad, so why should I be surprised?") She had to wait a long time for a metro car at a really busy metro station, and when a train finally came, there were so many people that she couldn't get on. So, she's still standing on the platform waiting for a train when all of the sudden there's a loud explosion from the tunnel the last train left down. Everyone leans forward and looks, but nothing can be seen: no fire, no smoke, no nothing. No one came over the loudspeaker and said anything, so when the next train pulls up, everyone gets on and they head down the tunnel. All of the sudden the train comes to a sharp stop, so quickly, in fact, that the people that were standing and not holding on that tightly fell right over. It started getting hot and people opened the little windows to let some fresh air in. However, the car started filling with thick, white smoke. Apparently the smoke smelled horrible and people were breathing through scarves or sweaters. And everyone was completely silent. The conductor said nothing. They just stood and waited. The smoke was getting thicker and thicker, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. But what could they do? Where could they go? Finally, just as the woman next to my teacher said, "I think I'm going to faint!", the train started moving. They got to the next station, everyone had to get off, and that was that. The question in her mind then was, "What happened? What caused this?" Apparently, it was just some sort of tube that exploded and they fixed it right away. However, later on, she realized that this was not the most important question she should be asking. What she should have been wondering was why everyone got on the train after they heard the explosion in the tunnel! As soon as she said this, I immediately realized that I hadn't even thought about that! Of course, that's the first thing I would have thought 4 months ago if I heard this story! Oh, Russia, what have you done to me?? :-)

To wrap up the Russia discussion for today, I have chosen something my conversation partner, Misha, told me. He works for the State Television and Radio Company, in the online news department. So, he researches and writes articles, recently pretty much only on the State Duma elections (Russian version of the House of Representatives). The company, as you probably could tell from it's name, is state-owned, the state being almost single-handedly controlled by the party Единая Россия (ye-deen-a-ya rah-see-ya, trans. United Russia). Well, apparently the people who work in this specific department aren't that keen on the party in power, and Misha even wrote something mocking them in one of his articles. Apparently, United Russia didn't like this very much and let them know that the party would no longer be giving them interviews, and that if this happened again, their department would be shut down completely. Now that's democracy for you! I guess, unlike most people, Putin doesn't love the sweet smell of freedom of the press in the morning. :-) All hail United Russia!

Now on to more fun, exciting, vacation things! My friend who I'm traveling with, Shannon, and I have started finalizing plans. It looks like this will be the agenda, give or take a few cities:

Barcelona, Spain

Lisbon, Portugal

London, England

---Meet Shannon---

Brussels, Belgium

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Copenhagen, Denmark

Malmo, Sweden

Krakow, Poland

Prague, Czech Republic

Vienna, Austria

Bratislava, Slovakia

Budapest, Hungary

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Zagreb, Croatia

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Belgrade, Serbia

Brasov, Romania

Bucharest, Romania

Sofia, Bulgaria

Istanbul, Turkey

St. Petersburg, Russia

I leave Moscow on the 15th of December and get back on the 1st of February. It's going to be an awesome 6 weeks. I can't wait!

Let me know if you have a preference as to what city (cities) you receive a postcard from! :-)

The dirt...

So, people told me that Moscow is a dirty city. When I think of a dirty city, I think of trash everywhere, etc. I didn't know they meant something different. Moscow is just plain filthy, and not because of litter. Everything is just covered in a layer of black, soot-like scum. It's disgusting. I feel so bad for the people who have to mop floors here--it's a never-ending job. Cars are disgusting, too. Anyone who buys a car that's not black/dark gray is a moron. You can't even read license plates sometimes. Cars will be COMPLETELY black from the tires to the windows. It's like someone took a can of black spraypaint and just laid it on thick. So gross. Everyday I come home and I wash my face and hands and the water runs gray. My pants are FILTHY after wearing them once. And I never really understood why people got shoe shines until I came here. Now I wish I knew how to efficiently shine a shoe. It's so ridiculous. I can't believe I breathe this air 24 hours a day. Фу! (Fu!, trans. "Yuck!", "Ew!")

Today for the first time I saw a woman wearing yoga pants. Like, those atheletic pants made out of t-shirt material with 2 stripes running down the side. All of the sudden I realized I hadn't seen someone wearing them on the street since I was in America. So weird.

So, you may have thought I was a little harsh about the dogs in a previous post. Well, I forgot to tell this story. My friend Justin told me he was walking home one day by this market that sells meat. Well, old women usually buy meat for the stray dogs that live near the market, but it was late and the market was closed and therefore there were no old women hanging around. So, the dogs started following him and when he didn't give them anything they started attacking him. One bit right through his pants and into his hip! He still has scars from it! Another time a stray dog bit him in the arm. This is why I don't like the dogs (hence "Kill them all."), and why I get very nervous when one even seems to be remotely heading in my direction. I don't want to have to get rabies shots while I'm in Russia. A girl that I work with was walking in the Red Square and some guy with a pet monkey came up to her and put it on her arm. She just put her other arm up to steady it and keep it from falling, and it bit her! So, she had to get rabies shots. None of these are Russian experiences I think I need to go through.

So, I am very lucky to live at the last metro stop. Doesn't seem intuitive, does it? However, this means that I get to sit for the entire length of my metro commute (45-60 mins). If I lived two stops down I'd be stuck standing the 40-55 mins. Everyone wants to sit, so this means at my metro stop we all just wait for the next train if the current one has no seats left. But the trains don't stop at the exact same spot every single time. So, even if you were standing in front of the doors when they shut on the last car 30 seconds ago, you might not be in front of them now. One day I was in the second row of people waiting and I think that something like this happened. The people in front of me went in, so I followed, and a girl to their left (not in front of the doors, but still in the first row) slides in behind me, meanwhile PUNCHING ME in the back. This is completely uncalled for. It's not my fault that this train didn't stop in the same spot it stopped last time. I mean, she was a girl and I have a very puffy winter coat, so it's not like it hurt; it's just the principle of the thing. What person punches another person over the order of getting in the metro car? I mean, we both got seats. She was only 5th instead of 4th. And it's not like I was cutting on purpose. Ugh, ridiculous.

Anyway, I should be studying for my culture class (The Language of Films and Theater). I have to prepare two presentations and study for the exam. For tomorrow. Which I have done nothing for. Oops. :-)